175 years in jail

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42725339

Former Olympic doctor Larry Nassar has been handed a jail sentence of 175 years in Michigan for abusing female athletes he was supposed to be treating.
....
Carrie Hogan, a former softball player at MSU, told the court it was seen as a "privilege" to be treated by Nassar. Successful treatment could make a difference to the university's stars on the brink of a sports career.
....
Nassar would position Rachael's mother at the head of the table so she was not able to see what he was doing.

With one hand, he would carry out sports massage. With the other, covered by a towel, he would insert his fingers into Rachael's vagina or anus. In one of their last sessions, he unhooked her bra and fondled her breast - the only time Rachael said she knew she was definitely being assaulted and not treated.

Being on the brink of a career makes people vulnerable to manipulation and "voluntary" exploitation.

Wow!

Singapore can play a critical role in the China-led Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as a global financial hub, providing the banking and legal support for projects, as well as facilitating in the "software transfer" to ensure projects are sustainable once completed.
http://www.straitstimes.com/world/europe/china-can-show-the-world-the-kind-of-power-it-wants-to-be-through-belt-and-road

This level of support for China's strategic initiatives was unthinkable just 1.5 years ago.

Gender-based intelligence test

By reading the headline, guess the gender of the person who bit into the battery:

Smartphone battery explodes in Chinese [wo/man's] face after [the person] bites it.

>

Investing in Russia

Last year, emerging markets returns were in the range of 30+%, with Russia being the biggest laggard growing just in single digits. Yesterday, I also read a report that Russian market had the lowest PE ratio among the entire group, at about 5. For the sake of comparison, S&P 500 PE ratio is frothy 26.51.

If the sanctions were lifted in the beginning of 2017, as was expected by most analysts at the time, it would make many people exceedingly rich, both in Russia and the US. That didn't happen because the Congress stepped in. Overall, the war with Ukraine and interference with US elections turned out to be a really bad idea, both financially and economically. I wonder, what would it take for the Russian market to catch up. Maybe it makes sense to place a long-term bet on, e.g. Putin's departure. Hard to guess.

(no subject)

It would be great if the French experiment succeeded:

He [Macron] thinks the left-right divide should be transcended. He doesn’t care about outworn ideologies, but about solutions that work, wherever they come from. He thinks startups are cool and the economy should be generally entrepreneurship-friendly, but he also wants some sort of welfare state. He’s got no problem whatsoever with gay marriage. He believes immigration is desirable for both economic and moral reasons.

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/01/macron-trump-economics/549944/